The sec­ond test, which was con­duct­ed just two days after the first test on May 24, has been termed as suc­cess­ful by the Indi­an defence sci­en­tists. The sec­ond test was nec­es­sary in order to re-val­i­date the oper­a­tional effi­cien­cy and strike capa­bil­i­ty of the mis­sile, which is used by both the Indi­an Army (IA) and the Indi­an Air Force (IAF).

The test, which was con­duct­ed at 11:10 am yes­ter­day, involved the inter­sec­tion of an air­borne tar­get, most like­ly a Pilot­less Tar­get Air­craft (PTA) at an alti­tude of few hun­dred meters above the sea. The mis­sile uses the local­ly devel­oped Rajen­dra pas­sive phased array radar and is capa­ble of engag­ing sev­er­al air­borne tar­gets simul­ta­ne­ous­ly. Indi­an defence sci­en­tists claim that Rajen­dra is capa­ble of track­ing as many as 64 tar­gets con­cur­rent­ly. It can also guide up to 12 mis­siles to their tar­gets at the same time.

The IAF is plan­ning to induct 8 Akash squadrons in to it’s fleet, which will con­sist of 125 mis­siles each. Mean­while, the Indi­an Army is like­ly to deploy the mis­siles in 2 Akash reg­i­ments, each hav­ing a total of 1,000 mis­siles. The Army is plan­ning to replace the anti­quat­ed sovi­et build SA‑6 mis­siles with Akash, if every­thing goes accord­ing to the plan. Apart from the IAF and IA, there are reports that the Malaysian Air Force is also in talks with the Indi­an offi­cials for a pos­si­ble mis­sile pur­chase deal.

The Akash mis­sile, which can car­ry a con­ven­tion­al high-explo­sive war­head of up to 60 kg, is hav­ing an effec­tive oper­a­tional range of 20 miles. Cur­rent­ly, it is man­u­fac­tured by the gov­ern­ment owned defence firms, the Bharat Elec­tron­ics Lim­it­ed, and the Bharat Dynam­ics Lim­it­ed.

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